Snowy Christmas and some presents

We had a lovely few days up at my Mum's for Christmas, and it was nice not having to do any of the cooking too! I was spoiled with some great Christmas presents too, including the laptop I'm typing this on - say hello to 'Hadrian'!

This set of saucepans was a joint present for us (although I suspect I'll be doing most of the cooking with them, with the OH eating the results), and they're the first new saucepans I've ever owned. Aren't they lovely and shiny? They are nice and solid too, and should be great fun to cook with. 

First go at cooking with the new saucepans!

Other crafty presents included a copy of Love at First Stitch by Tilly Walnes, which I've wanted ever since I borrowed a copy from the library. And some stitch markers - these are all shaped like little knitting symbols.

These are some bits from a local windmill - muesli (probably the best muesli I've ever eaten) and lavendar bags. They don't appear to know how to spell muesli though, as it's also spelt as "museli" on their website!

And I bought Lauren Guthrie's Learn to sew with Lauren with a book token I had, ready for lots of sewing adventures with my new machine.

On Christmas Eve we went over to Lincoln to catch up with some friends. It was a cold and frosty day but no snow!

The nephews played football in Mum's garden.

which was then covered in snow the following day!

I'm glad we didn't have the snow down south. What did you get for Christmas?

Christmas crafting

These are the secret projects I've been working on for the last few months - destined to be Christmas presents. First of all is a pair of Hermione's Everyday Socks (pattern by Erica Lueder), which I knitted for my Mum, in Araucania Ranco Sock yarn, on 2.25mm needles.

The stitch pattern really shows the colours up beautifully.

The leg

The foot

Slip stitch heel pattern

The other present was for my god-daughter - I decided to make her the doll from this Laura Ashley book, which I was given by my own Godmother when I was about 10. The story involves a girl called Emily who is desperate for a hat to keep the sun off her face, as she thinks it causes freckles.

These are the two earlier incarnations of the doll. The one on the left I sewed by hand when I was about ten. The left hand one is partially done on a sewing machine, when I was about twelve.

As I started to make the doll, it quickly became obvious that I had a LOT more free time when I was ten, than I do now. I think I also had a lot more concentration and smaller fingers. Still, I ended up making it in bursts in the afternoons when I wasn't working. I had a lot of fun in the local haberdashery choosing some fabric to make the doll's outfit. This is the doll, wearing her dress, and having just finished off attaching the hair - which involves unwinding some wool to make it wiggly.

Now she can see where she's going!

Pinafore finished.

And her hat!

Phew, a lot of work, but I'm pleased with the final result, and it made me get the sewing machine out and use it a lot, which was fun. And nearly finished the sewing machine off in the process!

I hope everyone is having a good Christmas. What Christmas crafting did you do?

Even more finished items and CHALLENGE COMPLETED!

I seem to be on a bit of a roll with finished items at the moment, although most of them are small projects, it's not that I've suddenly become Speed Knitter.

I finally finished the fourth of my challenge projects this year (four adult-sized garments in a year, in 4ply, dk, aran and chunky). This is the Garter Yoke Cardi finished and blocked, although I haven't yet sewn any buttons on it, as I can't decide whether just to go for one at the top or all the way down. I think I should have made the next size up, as I can get into it and it's not tight, but it doesn't do up at the front. I hadn't intended to wear it done up so that isn't the end of the world, but it does affect what I decide to do about buttons.

At the last minute I made a load of mini Christmas stockings to go on a friend's stall at the church craft fayre. Almost all of them sold really quickly, at £2.50 each. These were a good way of using up oddments of sock yarn, and the free pattern is Mini Christmas Stocking Ornaments by Julie Williams.

I used the Knitting Goddess pack of sock yarn I bought at Yarndale to make the OH a hat for Christmas (don't worry, although he reads this blog, he's seen me making it as I kept trying it on him!). I chose the Mini Roni Hat pattern as it comes in such a wide range of sizes. I used about 5 mini skeins for the hat, so still have a couple of the lightest colours to use up.

And I've been knitting another Puerperium, this time for a friend who is expecting a little girl (actually, I know she went into hospital to have a caesarean a couple of days ago but isn't home yet, so I should get this in the post fairly soon!). I used the lime green RYC cashsoft 4 ply I dyed in the summer, with some careful measuring for the sleeves to make sure I used it all up.

Once it was finished though I wasn't so keen on the colour. It had dyed a bit splodgy in places and was a bit pale for a baby. So I got out the Kool aid and did a bit of dyeing again. I used some sachets of black grape flavour, and the microwave technique. This looks more like it! It was actually a lot easier dyeing the finished garment than the yarn-in-a-skein had been back in the summer. It turned out my skein winding was dreadful, so it took forever to disentangle the yarn and turn it into a ball the first time I dyed it.

When I blocked it (do you like my blocking mats? The OH gave me them for my birthday!) it looked a bit disturbingly in your face red, but I think that just the light then.

This is more like the real colour - a kind of deep pinky/purple, which is much more what I was aiming at. The buttons are little pandas, which I think I got free with a knitting magazine a while ago.

I'm pleased with how that has turned out. There are a few other things on the needles/sewing machine at the moment, but they're all Christmas presents so I can't reveal them on here.

Christmas preparations

This year, with working part-time and the bank holidays, I've ended up with a 3.5 week Christmas holiday whilst only using up 4 days of annual leave. This is the longest break I've had since I was an undergraduate, and I've had a great time getting things sorted out for Christmas, oh and getting a new shed, but more about that in a later post.

Back in November I made the Christmas cake. This is the dried fruit and brandy soaking overnight.

And the cake when it came out of the oven.

Then I poured brandy over it every week until last week, when I added the marzipan to it. Which I forgot to photograph.
Then today I iced it, using the cop-out ready-made fondant icing instead of royal icing.

.

This is batch of mince pies number three.

I also made stollen for the first time ever, and it was surprisingly easy, just time consuming because of having to leave it to rise for a while. I made one batch using the Delia recipe, but that is actually much more complicated than the Paul Hollywood recipe I used for the second batch, which also has more dried fruit it so it a lot tastier too.

As you do, a week before Christmas, I finally got the curtains altered that I've been meaning to do for nearly four years now...

I had these up in my old house, and the windows here are smaller, so the curtains were covering the top of the radiators - not ideal in the winter, so I've shortened them (there's a second pair too) to a more sensible length. This is one of the spare bedrooms ready for Christmas guests!

Think that's all for now. Another post to follow shortly with my finished projects on!
I hope you all have a fantastic Christmas!

Christmas

We had a fairly quiet Christmas, staying with my Mum and eating massive amounts of food (including an entire nut roast just for me. It lasted days). We had a few trips out, to look at kitchen showrooms (!) and to meet up with an old school friend of mine. And my brother's family came over with the nephews, who, of course, are now huge.

I received some lovely presents - some of them are here:

Apron and oven gloves to go in the new kitchen (which we haven't got yet!).
A carving fork to go with the carving knife we already have - I do a roast now every Saturday for the OH and was struggling a bit with the lump of cooked dead animal sliding around on the plate when I attempted to carve it.
Fair trade Palestinian olive oil.
Blackboard style garden labels.

Large box of chocolate toffee (apparently I'm meant to share this with the OH. Hmm. We'll see).
Downton Abbey series 3 blu-ray.
Chocolate shower gel and body butter. (Is there a theme developing here?).
SHEEP SOCKS.

A greetings card organiser (I have big plans to Get Organised this year).
A record book for visiting cathedrals in this country - the idea is that there's some information in the book about each cathedral, and also space to write down details of your visit and your reflections on it. As we seem to visit quite a lot of cathedrals on holiday this seems like a great way of recording our visits!

And a really groovy knitting bag.

Oh, and I realised I'd forgotten to take a picture of my Secret Santa gift at knitting group - some stitch markers:

I got a lot of knitting done whilst we were away, including finishing the first pattern section of the South Seas Stole.

This first part was reasonably straightforward, and I managed to do most of it whilst watching TV (yes, including the Killing with subtitles!), but the charts are now getting more complicated so I'm going to have to concentrate. Luckily I've still got most of a sock to go on the Everyone Outta the Pool socks.

Hope everyone had a good Christmas.

Decisions made!

Thank you for the comments on my last post, I got a few decisions made!

I decided that I did like the Everyone Outta the Pool socks in that yarn, so kept going and finished the first one. I did use the suggested heel from Sensational Knitted Socks, which I definitely like (still cannot fathom why I didn't like it back in 2007), although I want to find the instructions for the heel I did back then, as I liked that one too! ;-) I've done more of the heel stitch on the sole too because of where I wear out socks. I like the way the slip stitches in the pattern have broken up the bands of colour - it's more obvious the closer you look. The yarn colours are also more rainbowy in good light, and not just the pink/yellow/blue it appears in the photos. The weather has been so bad the light hasn't been good for taking photos this year!

I love the cuffs - they are double knitted (the first time I've used this technique), and then grafted together, which gives a seamless finish, and looks rather good, I think.

Meanwhile, I also acquired some beads from a local shop for my South Seas stole - none of the pinks was quite right with the yarn, so I went with clear beads in the end. It turned out I also needed a crochet hook to attach them with, as the pattern called for a US 13 (0.85mm) hook, which doesn't seem to exist here. Fortunately I found a 0.75mm one in another local shop, so I could get on with the project over Christmas rather than having to order one online! As you can see from the photo, with £1 coin for scale, the hook is absolutely teeny tiny.

I also got some buttons to finish off the baby cardigan from the last post, but forgot to take a photo of it, so that will have to wait for now!

Christmas preparations were completed. I made a pencil case for my nephew using some football fabric, as I couldn't find one to buy in the shops. But I forgot to take a photo before wrapping it up, so that will have to wait until he opens it now! I also put marzipan and icing on the Christmas cake, and I'm rather pleased with this year's effort (after last year's wonky holly leaves). The holly is edible and from Lakeland.

We got the Christmas tree put up at the weekend too.

I hope you all have a lovely Christmas break and here's to a lot more blogging soon!

Christmas

We had a great Christmas. We put the tree up a few days before (we leave it up until 6th January), and also had a poinsettia that a friend had given us.

The nativity scene was a little dwarfed by the knitted wedding figures on the mantelpiece. Obviously there were giant knitted wedding figures at the birth of Christ, not to forget the giant knitted robin too.

And I did get the Christmas cake finished on time! I took a day off work the week before, when I got the marzipan put on, then did the icing just before Christmas. Unfortunately I didn't realise until the last minute that we don't own a holly shaped cutter, so this is my attempt at cutting out holly shapes with a knife (much to the amusement of the OH and my Mum). There were also rude comments about my anaemic green holly leaves and "pink" holly berries. Next year we'll go for e numbers rather than the "natural" food colouring...

Someone in the US wanted to know what mince pies are. So this is the batch I made to take into work (I decided to make mince pies for everyone instead of doing Christmas cards).
 This is just normal shortcrust pastry, made with flour and fat, which has sat in the fridge for a few hours, then rolled out. I didn't make my own mincemeat, so this came in a jar from the supermarket. Mince meat (which used to be savoury with actual meat in it) is a mixture of dried fruit, apple, cinnamon, nutmeg, suet and booze. This sort uses vegetable suet so it's vegetarian.

 You cut the pastry into rounds of two different sizes, and put the bigger ones into a greased Yorkshire pudding tin, then fill with mincemeat and put the smaller round on the top, after wetting the edges of the bottom with water.

 Then bake in the oven. I usually put a cross in the top as well, to let the steam escape, but I forgot this time.

I got the Christmas presents I was making done in time. This is part of a batch of lemon curd.

And a laptop case for Mum's laptop. I made the pattern up as I went along, the yarn is King Cole Riot Chunky, bought when we were on holiday in York. I was a bit worried about whether it would fit, as her laptop is bigger than mine, but, as you can see, it fitted perfectly!

 I lined the case with cat fabric, purchased at Gillie's Fabrics in York.

And what did I receive? Some really cool presents. These ones are shared with the OH - a gravy boat to match our crockery (amusingly we opened presents after Christmas lunch, when we'd had to use the milk jug for the gravy. If only we'd opened the presents earlier we could have used the gravy boat!). Some chocolate. And a kit to make raisin bread, with the dry ingredients, homemade marmalade, a bread tin and recipe included.

 And, for me, some gardening things, including Alan Titchmarsh's The kitchen gardener which I'd been wanting to read. A magic tool for making little pots for seedlings out of newspaper and some seeds.

 And this is my present from the secret santa at knitting group - a set of Chibi needles and some locking stitch markers. Cool or what?!

The on Boxing Day we went for a walk on Staines Moor, which looked suitably desolate and windswept, despite being so close to both Heathrow and the M25! Bit of a contrast with last year when it was so icy we didn't dare leave the house.

Hope you all had a great Christmas too!